Neo-Sumerian Texts from Ur in the British Museum: Epigraphical and Archaeological Catalogue of an Unpublished Corpus of Texts and Fragments.

• Author: Widell, Magnus
• Position: Book review

Neo-Sumerian Texts from Ur in the British Museum: Epigraphical and Archaeological Catalogue of an Unpublished Corpus of Texts and Fragments. By FRANCO D'AGOSTINO, FRANCESCO POMPONIO, AND ROMINA LAURITO. Nisaba, vol. 5. Messina: DI.SC.A.M., 2004. Pp. 221, illus. [euro]40 (paper).

In 2002, Franco D'Agostino and Francesco Pomponio published the first volume in the University of Messina series Nisaba. Within only a few years, this series has produced a number of excellent editions of cuneiform tablets kept in the British Museum. (1) In this volume--the fifth in the series--D'Agostino and Pomponio, together with archaeologist Romina Laurito, have focused on the Neo-Sumerian texts from the city of Ur in the British Museum. Their useful and important catalogue adds 945 texts to our list of published tablets from the city of Ur, bringing the total number of Neo-Sumerian tablets from this city to 4,207. (2) The volume is divided into three parts, all of which are subdivided into more specific chapters.

The first part, entitled "Philological Section" (pp. 9-102), contains a brief introduction with some explanations of the philological catalogue (pp. 9-12), followed by the actual catalogue (pp. 15-102), listing the size, content, and dates of the texts, as well as any particular administrative term(s) used in the transactions of the individual texts. The catalogue is divided into two parts. The first, which was written by D'Agostino, consists of 629 tablets numbered by the excavators, while the second part, by Pomponio, describes the remaining 316 tablets from Ur without excavation numbers. These unnumbered tablets have been arbitrarily numbered by the authors from U.31001 to U.31316.

The second part, entitled "Archaeological Section" (pp. 105-61), was prepared entirely by Laurito, and is organized in the same way as the first. There is an introduction with an explanation of the terminology and the morphology/typology used in the catalogue (pp. 105-16). Based on shape, size, presence or absence of seal impressions, and administrative function (i.e., "bulla" or "envelope"), the author identifies twelve different types of tablets, labeled from A through M. The development of a physical typology for Ur III tablets is long overdue, and this first attempt is certainly most commendable. There can be no doubt that a consistent and well-defined system of classifying Ur III tablets, both by their contents and by physical characteristics, has the potential to contribute significantly to our understanding and interpretation of these documents. In addition to rather detailed descriptions and discussions of the different types, accompanied by schematic drawings in the back of the book, the chapter also includes brief remarks concerning the clay composition of the material, the significance of the presence or absence of fingerprints on the tablets, as well as an informative and interesting discussion concerning the sealing practices of the texts.

159 tablets (approximately seventeen percent) in the catalogue are sealed. In 151 cases, it was possible for Laurito to determine whether the seals had been rolled over the tablets before or after they were inscribed with any writing (pre-sealed), about thirty-three percent of the impressions were made after the tablets were inscribed (post-sealed), and the remaining six percent of the sealed tablets were sealed both before and after they were inscribed. That the majority of the tablets from Ur apparently were sealed...